Finding a Way
by Dahne
Summary: Things fall apart, but something new is always being built. SnakeOcelot.


How had he gotten here? It all felt so long ago. For just a little while, everything had been pure. A clean fight. Adamska tried to pretend not to be thinking about him. About how he'd won every battle, but lost the game, in every way that mattered. It bothered him, and made him wonder just what he might be losing himself. It was over, for now, and he spent a lot of time alone. No one demanded much of him. They kept their distance. He could stay on the mountain ridge that overlooked Groznyj Grad - what used to be Groznyj Grad - as long as he liked, absently spinning his revolver and trying not to think.

A noise, and motion. He had his revolver pinned on it in an instant, though somewhere along the line there had been a flourish that was probably unnecessary.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

He hated being caught unawares. That was one of his reasons, maybe.

A shadow moved towards him out of the dark doorway that led to the ruins. He'd completely dropped his guard, taking it for granted that he wouldn't be followed. Weak.

"That's not going to do you a lot of good, if you still load it with blanks."

His gun lowered to his side. It shouldn't have, but it did.

"You."

"Me," Snake agreed, stepping forward into the light. He looked...older, somehow. He nodded toward the gun, resting half-forgotten in Adamska's hand.

"I take it that means you're not going to shoot me."

He could. In less than a second he could raise up the barrel, jerk his finger in the motion easier than thought, and watch him fall. He would let him.

"I thought you said I didn't have what it takes to kill you," he heard himself say.

Snake chuckled ruefully. "Guess I did." He was still coming closer. Adamska wasn't nervous. Or scared. Or anything like that. Of course not. There was nothing to be afraid of. He didn't know why he wanted to step back, or why only the cliff behind him kept him from doing so.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. His voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked it to be.

Snake shrugged. He was very close now. "Clean-up. Looks like mostly they just wanted to keep me busy so I wouldn't think about things too much."By his expression Adamska could tell that it wasn't working.

Adamska put his hands up in front of him, but it didn't help. Now Snake was uncomfortably close and his hands were on his chest. Abandoning pride for the moment, he scrabbled to the side and escaped a few steps backwards. Better. Damn it. Why was it always so easy for this man to destroy his composure? The gun dangled from his fingers.

Snake sighed. At that moment he looked very tired. "Either use the thing or put it away, kid."

It was back in its holster before Adamska noticed moving.

"Don't look like that," he ordered, only partially in an attempt to regain lost ground.

Snake lifted an eyebrow quizzically. "Like what?"

"Defeated. You didn't look like that when you were hanging from Volgin's ceiling, don't do it now."

Some last reserve of energy seemed to drain out of Snake. He flopped down near the cliff's edge, motioning for Adamska to join him. Which he did, cautiously. He still didn't know what to expect, and privately doubted he'd know how to deal with it if he did.

"Kid," Snake said heavily, "there's a lot you don't understand."

"I know more than you think," he retorted.

Snake looked at him sideways. "That so?"

Shit. Think, _then_ talk. He never made such childish mistakes. He could weigh people effortlessly, slip past their guard, play them off against one another. All the perfect talents for a traitor. He could see right through people, and know what they would do before they did themselves. Except for one.

Ah, well. What did it matter? Besides, he could always shoot him if he seemed likely to become a threat. (A part of his mind rolled its eyes at this and wondered who he thought he was kidding.)

"You were supposed to meet ADAM at Rassvet, right?" He didn't wait for confirmation. "Too bad I couldn't get out from under Volgin's eye soon enough to make it. By the time I got there, that woman had already started her game."

Snake stared at him incredulously. "I wouldn't have figured you for an NSA codebreaker."

Adamska snorted. "You actually _believe_ anything your superior officers tell you?" He was oddly naive, in some ways. Adamska himself had gotten over that particular habit years ago.

"Looks like I'm the only one who didn't know what was going on all along," Snake said.

Adamska shook his head. "Not quite. Volgin knew even less."

He actually laughed, and Adamska couldn't help but smile a bit in return. "Great! That's really saying something."

For a moment, his eye was clear again, like it had been before. The contrast was stark beside the flat black eyepatch, and Adamska unconsciously reached out to touch it, realizing what he was doing too late to pull back. That never happened. He was always in complete control of his motions, whether doing gun tricks or...never mind. Snake stiffened, but didn't finch away, letting him run his fingers along the edge where the leather met skin. The gesture felt irrationally intimate.

_What can I say? _he thought. _"I'm sorry I shot your eye out_" _isn't really adequate. _ At a loss was another thing he never was.

"Why did you protect her?" he asked instead. Because of the unaccustomed high altitude, his heart was beating faster. He just hadn't noticed before.

"I needed her," he said.

"Is that all?" _Why do I want to know this? _The eyepatch fascinated him. The difference between what was covered and what wasn't. Despite his fascination, or maybe because of it, he drew his hand back, before...well, he didn't really know.

Snake looked thoughtful. "Yeah," he said finally. "I think it is."

"Whatever happened to her?" Adamska pretended not to care much about the answer, but glanced at him surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye.

Fortunately, Snake was leaning back and looking up at the sky and didn't seem to notice. "She told me the whole story."

"So you know."

"Yeah."

Adamska's fingers traced abstract figures in the soft earth. He didn't look to see what they were.

"Would it help to know that there isn't anything else you could have done?"

"No. Not really."

A moment passed. Adamska stared down at the pattern the ruins made, random charred runes on the ground far below.They'd have looked like broken eggshells, if they weren't the wrong color.

"There isn't."

"I know."

A wind picked up from the north, bringing an acrid, smoky smell that made Adamska's eyes sting in memory.

"When did she tell you?" Not that it mattered. His curiosity would nag at him until it was satisfied. He always wanted to know everything. That didn't change.

"When I woke up, she was gone." His voice was tinged with bitter humor. "She left a tape and took off with the Legacy."

"Bitch," Adamska muttered. "_Stupid _ bitch. Nothing could've gotten _me _ to leave." As soon as it was said, his eyes widened. "Shit. Did I say that out loud?"

Snake was grinning at him. "Uh-huh."

"What I meant was— I—" He never gave up while he was ahead, but he'd never been this far behind.

His denial made no visible impression. "So that's why you kept following me."

Surging to his feet, Adamska flung one arm out violently. "It's not funny!"

And sank back down.

"All right," he amended, "maybe it's a little funny."

In retrospect, it was the stupidest thing he could have possibly done. A mistake, even if it wasn't consciously made. Professionals, the good ones, didn't get emotions about the pawns. Or the knights. It was a weakness, possibly a fatal one. But it happened, and there was nothing he could do about it. It...no, not frightened. Annoyed him. He hated things he couldn't do anything about. He saw the irony in that, and hated it too. Supposedly it was something that no one in the world could control, which only made him more determined to tamp it down.

"I wonder if she's found out yet," Adamska said, hoping to shift his focus away before the full implications sank in.

He bit, though Adamska got the irritating feeling that he was being humored. "Found out what?"

"That she fell for the fake." If you're going to give away a little, why not everything? Amateur. But it was hard to care, now, and he didn't really want to.

"A fake," Snake said blankly.

He laughed for a long time.

"You had us all fooled," he said with a hint of admiration. "The whole time."

Adamska shrugged, secretly pleased. That was the maddening paradox of espionage; the entire point of it was that if you were good, there was no _audience ._

"She nearly killed me for a fake." John let out a long breath. "Says a lot about everything, doesn't it."

"Hmph. If I don't have what it takes to kill you, how could she?"

"That's the problem." His expression was distant. "I think she could have."

"Are you saying she's stronger than me?" Maybe finding something to get angry about would help.

"No." He squinted up at the sun asymmetrically. Funny, how easy it was to get used to that. "Just the opposite, really."

What the hell did he mean by that? Adamska wasn't about to ask. Anyway, there was something else he needed to know, and it was more important.

"Why did you keep protecting me?" he demanded. "Even after I— why?"

"You're still young," John said.

"That's not good enough!"

"Too bad." The words were sharp and cold. He looked away again, and said softly, "There's too many of my own 'why's I never found good answers for to try to find anyone else's."

As soon as he recognized the compulsion it was too late. He wanted to say something true, and not an easy truth, but a hard truth, the kind that could break things. Maybe just to prove that he could.

"You want an answer? I can give you one." Adamska's voice was harsh, whether from forcing the words out or trying to force them back in he couldn't tell. "I watched you being tortured because it hurt. I kept watching even after The Boss turned away because maybe, if you couldn't hate her, you could at least hate me. It hurt enough that I could forget how to lie. If you hated me enough— I've got no illusions. My life won't be a long one. So I'll find the most glorious death there is, and I'll choose it for myself."

"You're wrong," John said softly.

"Don't you get it?" Adamska shouted, gesturing violently. "This world is corrupt to the core! It's falling apart around us. Look at us! How many times have we been on the brink of nuclear war, in the last few years? How many more times were there that we'll never know about? I could have at least ended as something real, between people. Something honest."

"_Listen to me_." Low but intense, Snake's voice cut to the core of his rising hysteria. Grabbing Adamska by the arm - already he had nearly forgotten how quick he was - he pulled their faces close. "A soldier looking for his own death is no good to anyone. You deserve..." He let go and fell back, hands propping his up behind his back. "...something better than that kind of ending."

Adamska blinked.

He didn't know why he was so surprised, besides it being unexpected. He didn't understand this man at all. He especially didn't know why he was suddenly so attuned to that part of his arm that had been touched.

He thought of Volgin, his grunted "_Fallen for him?"_ He hadn't answered, since he was obviously being baited. But then again, knowing what he did about Volgin's own tendencies...Good god, had he actually been _asking_? He still wouldn't have answered. There were some parts of Volgin's insanity that were impossible to predict. As absurdly easy as it was to fool him on the important things, Adamska had the feeling that he wouldn't have been believed no matter what he said. Preconceived notions were nearly impossible to avoid by any means but running in the other direction. It was a stupid question, anyway. But then, Volgin always had been stupid. Idiotic, completely ridiculous.

It was then that he realized that he couldn't lie anymore.

"You're doing it again," he said, carefully casual.

"What?" He exuded the aura of carefully cultivated half-attention that always indicated that a person was listening as closely as they could without causing themselves injury. In some ways he was so simple.

"Looking like that. I don't like it." Adamska was getting ready. " What you need," he said airily, "is a distraction."

Too late to back out now.

As John turned to him and opened his mouth to ask what the hell he was talking about, just as he had predicted he would, Adamska lunged and kissed him with all the pent-up fervor he had never quite been able to suppress.

"Mff!"

There was a lot of it.

"Mmm."

There was something about this man that broke down his defenses, his disbeliefs and denials, from the inside out. At the moment he was glad of it. That way he could enjoy the fact that he was being kissed back as well as enthusiastically embraced without being distracted by any pesky incredulity. The only thing he had trouble believing was that the woman had had this in her grasp and left. Or that she had stopped long enough to.

Before he could ask he let him in, and he tasted like he smelled, smoky and earthy, and he must have found a hornet's nest because there was something sweet there too or maybe that was just him and Adamska was beginning to think that he shouldn't have done this because he might not ever be able to stop, but somehow he did.

"Damn," Snake breathed.

"Is that good or bad?" Adamska asked. He felt reckless and joyously stupid.

"Kid..." He started to laugh. "You do don't anything by halves, do you?"

"No," he said. "So?"

"I'd been wondering why, with all that's happened, the thing I couldn't stop thinking about was you."

"So you..." Adamska prodded. Maybe a little too eagerly, if the part of him that was usually in control had anything to say about it. It didn't.

"Yeah." That, and the slow, easy smile that was his alone, told him everything he needed to know.

He kissed Adamska then, taking his chin in one hand, tenderly and thorough. Adamska had heard that people kissed one another like this, but hadn't really believed it. Gradually it grew more heated, until he wanted more and expressed it by launching himself forward, knocking John onto his back with a muffled grunt. Impatiently, Adamska pulled at his clothing, until he was forestalled by a hand on his chest.

"Hold on," John said. "There's a better place to do this."

"Hmm? Ah!"

The latter exclamation was due to John grabbing Adamska bodily, jumping to his feet, and slinging him effortlessly over his shoulder, then setting out purposefully towards the ruins.

"Hey!" Adamska protested, not without some difficultly, as the shoulder making the acquaintance of his diaphragm was rendering the process of breathing a deal more complicated than usual. "Put me down!"

"Really?" John replied, not breaking his stride.

Adamska considered. "Well..." The view _was _nice, and there was something about the strong, secure arm locked around his legs that wasn't at all unpleasant.

"Too late." Shifting his weight back, John kicked open the door. He entered and deposited Adamska on the pallet inside.

John's eye scanned the interior disapprovingly, noting the rat that mountaineered up a dusty pile of boxes in the corner to inspect the pair and lost interest when they appeared not immediately edible.

"Not exactly a romantic setting," he said.

"I don't care." Adamska grabbed him and pulled him down into an impatient kiss, rolling so that the other man was on his hands and knees above him. Immediately he resumed his previously aborted efforts to get rid of the annoying clothing in his way, and was satisfied to feel the action being reciprocated. Seeing the hurried way Adamska was fumbling, John grinned deviously and slowed his movements to a deliberate, painstaking crawl. Adamska growled and gave up on the buttons, which seemed at this moment to utilize a mechanism complex beyond all reason, in favor of simply ripping them off.

"I liked that shirt," Snake said wryly as Adamska removed the remains and tossed them to the side.

"Too bad." Fortunately, the belt was more tractable. Within moments it clattered onto the floor, pants and boxers soon to follow. Adamska would have wondered why in the world John looked slightly confused at that, but he had more important things to do. Abandoning any pretense of patience, John followed suit, and soon Adamska's was strewn haphazardly around the room as well. The single eye scanned him slowly.

" _Damn_," he said, with obvious appreciation.

"Why thank you," Adamska replied, trying not to sound vain and not caring when he failed. "You're not half bad yourself."

The chest above him was embellished with haphazard scars, many old, many new. That was all right. Just added texture. He brushed his lips along them, enjoying the sighs he evoked, but stopped when the surface began to shake.

"What's funny?" he demanded crossly.

"Your hair. It's...fuzzy."

"Oh," he said, mollified. Ticklish, eh? He'd have to remember that.

Adamska reached up and pulled John down against him, every bit of contact he got making him want more. The finely callused hands slipping down his back made him moan in a way he hadn't known he was capable of.

"What you said before." John's voice was husky, barely above a whisper. "About not leaving. Did you mean that?"

"Good God yes." If the answer didn't satisfy him, the fervent kiss that followed it would have.

For a moment after it was broken, John seemed to be considering something. Then he said, "You've never done this before, have you?"

"What? Of course I have!" Adamska protested.

John looked at him.

"Well...no."

There was that smile, indulgent and infuriating and that Adamska was starting to realize the lengths he would go to to see. "Don't worry. I"ll—"

"If you say 'I'll be gentle,' I _will _ shoot you."

John laughed. "Fine, fine."

He kissed along the curve of Adamska's neck and ran his fingers down his chest, smiling at the shiver this evoked.

"I will, though."

"I know."

* * *

It's a truth of the world that men are men everywhere, young boys even more so. Thus, whenever the Ocelot unit was on one of their rare periods of leave in whatever city happened to be nearby where they were stationed, their first destination was invariably that quarter wherein scantily clad women would lounge out of windows and purr, "Hey there, sailor," with no discernable irony. Adamska would always roll his eyes and wave the others off. Honestly, they were all at least a few years older than him and sometimes they acted like such children. 

A few months ago, however, during such a circumstance, they had apparently decided unanimously that it was high time for Adamska to come along. He had finally agreed, if only because the alternative was to be hauled through the streets by a crowd of soldiers as they alternated snickering and shouting suggestions, many logistically impossible and some probably illegal if they were. As this particular city was located near a base, this wasn't all that uncommon a sight, but it was still one that Adamska would rather avoid being at the center of. So he followed reluctantly to what had been decided upon, though not without a lively debate that might have gone on long into the night were it not for Adamska's exasperated insistence that they shut the fuck up and pick one already, as the most reputable of the establishments from whose windows said women would lounge. After a flurry of negotiations and more sly looks than one person should ever be asked to endure, Adamska had found himself alone with a bored-looking girl who managed somehow to slink while standing still. He left a while later, slightly embarrassed and wondering what all the fuss was about.

This explained why, before drifting down into sleep in the midst of a warmth no less welcome for all its unfamiliarity, the last sound Adamska made was a small, enlightened, "Oh."

* * *

"You were right about one thing." 

"One?" Adamska yawned, sitting up. His hair, while of insufficient length to be properly disheveled, was making a valiant attempt at it. "Oh well, it's a start."

Snake, already up, fished his belt out from under the bed. "We keep getting way too close to blowing up the planet."

"True." Stretching lazily, and grinning to himself at the appreciative glance he received, Adamska followed John's example and began to gather up his clothing. It was a more challenging task than usual.

"Somebody should do something about it." John sounded thoughtful.

"Yeah," Adamska agreed. He climbed partway up a stack of boxes, idly wondering how the hell his shirt had gotten all the way up there. "Shit. You mean us, don't you?"

"Yep."

"I hate to tell you this," Adamska said, jumping down to grab his pants from where they'd landed on an inexplicable little frog statue and tug them on, "but I'm a little busy playing about half a dozen regimes and conspiracies and so on against each other while keeping up the appearance of having no influence on anything right now. Not a lot of time for side projects."

John gathered him up in his arms and gave him a brief, teasing kiss. "You're a smart kid. Make them think it's their own idea."

Closing his eyes, Adamska leaned against his chest. "I could do that." He smiled. "A snake and an ocelot. We could have a theme."

John laughed, a deep rumble in his chest. "Yeah."

Adamska knew that it would not be long before he saw him again. It was amazing how easy it was to get what you wanted, when you made sure that no one knew you wanted it. That was one of the rules. He had to remind himself of them. Something about John made them unnecessary. It was amazing, what a relief that was. It was a long time before he let go.

Outside, the glare of the sun was a shock after the cool in the shelter of the ruins. They kissed once more, a deep one that lingered.

"That should last me a while," Ocelot said dazedly.

Snake set out toward the mountainside, going a short distance before turning to call, "Be seeing you soon. Adamska."

Real names. They felt different.

"Soon," he promised. "John."

It was then that he noticed something. It was back in Snake's eye, what he had been unable to name as missing. The glint of determination.

John must have seen him looking contemplative, because he grinned, and gestured in a very familiar way.

"We're not done yet."

* * *

Notes: 

-Ocelot seems to me like he'd start a lot of conversations by pointing a gun at somebody.

-This story wrote itself far easier than mine usually do. Usually I have to sort of bludgeon them out, but this one I only had to occasionally coax along. This should either mean that it's especially good or especially bad, or maybe just that I'm getting into the habit of writing.

-Shit! I need a title! I always save them while in progress under something stupid. This one, for example, was 'hebineko.' It was really difficult not to call it "Touka Koukan", but that may just be because I've been watching way too much Fullmetal Alchemist lately.


End file.
